There are various types of nursing wheelchairs to be used for care receivers having difficulty in walking, and hence there are various types of mechanisms therefor. In recent years, society is aging and hence the nursing wheelchairs are subject to increasing demand. However, in the case of nursing wheelchairs used for temporary transferences such as transference from a bed to a toilet, a care person needs to hold the care receiver when loading the care receiver thereon. Therefore, the care person bears a heavy burden on his or her lower back, which has been a problem in nursing care. On the other hand, when it is difficult for a single care person to hold the care receiver, a plurality of care persons need to assist the loading. Therefore, there arises a problem that although the burden on the lower back per care person is reduced, working efficiency is lowered.
As an example of the nursing wheelchair of the related art proposed for solving such problems, there is a nursing wheelchair 100 described in PTL 1 (see FIG. 8A, FIG. 8B). The nursing wheelchair 100 includes belt conveyers 101, 102, 103 and a hoisting apparatus 104, and has a configuration in which the belt conveyers 101, 102, 103 are brought into proximity to the care receiver on the bed, the care receiver is transferred onto the nursing wheelchair by the belt conveyers 101, 102, 103 being operated in a state of lying (see FIG. 8A), and the belt conveyers 101, 102, 103 are transformed into a chair shape (see FIG. 8B) after the completion of transference.
According to the nursing wheelchair of the related art as the nursing wheelchair 100 described above, the care receiver can be loaded with a single care person. However, this apparatus is inevitably a large-scale apparatus provided with a complex mechanism. In addition, because of heaviness, a heavy labor is required for the transference. There is also a problem that a physical burden of the care receiver when transferred by the belt conveyer is not negligible.
In contrast, a nursing wheel chair configured in such a manner that a seat and a seatback are demountably mountable for the purpose of facilitating transference when the care receiver is transferred between a platform of the bed or the toilet and the nursing wheelchair is proposed (see PTL 2 to PTL 9).